On Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 12 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab of the Rockefeller Library, Sydney Skybetter, Lecturer of Dance and Fellow of Public Humanities at Brown, will give a talk entitled, “The Choreography of Things.” This event is free and open to the public. A light reception will follow.
Skybetter will discuss his research into ways that movement generates meaning, for people and for machines. By tracing the commingling histories of dance notation and affective computing, exploring a gamut of emerging technologies (including drone swarms, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and robots) and ranting about the premonitionary qualities of the movie Minority Report, Skybetter will argue for the importance of choreographic method and metaphor for our emerging technological future.
Sydney Skybetter is a choreographer. Hailed by Dance Magazine as “One of the most influential people in dance today,” his work has been performed around the country at such venues as The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Boston Center for the Arts, Jacob’s Pillow and The Joyce Theater. He has consulted on issues of cultural change and technology for The National Ballet of Canada, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Hasbro, New York University and The University of Southern California, among others. A sought-after speaker, he lectures on everything from dance history to cultural futurism, most recently at Harvard University, South by Southwest Interactive, TEDx, Saatchi and Saatchi, Dance/USA, NYU and MVR5. He is a Public Humanities Fellow and Lecturer at Brown University, where he researches the problematics of human computer interfaces and mixed reality systems. He is the founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI), which convenes ethnographers, anthropologists, speculative designers and performing artists to discuss the choreography of the Internet of Things. He produces shows at Joe’s Pub, SteelStacks and OBERON with DanceNOW[NYC], has served as a Grant Panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts, is a Curatorial Advisor for Fractured Atlas’ Exponential Creativity Fund, and is the winner of a RISCA Fellowship in Choreography from the State of Rhode Island. He received his MFA in Choreography from New York University.
Date: Thursday, December 7, 2017
Time: 12 p.m.
Location: Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library, 10 Prospect Street, Providence